District transport officer, Patna, Ajay Kumar Thakur, blamed the delay on Vahan-2, an outdated registration software still in use and said the problem would be resolved once its replacement, Vahan-4, was in place.

A new car without the mandatory registration number. (Representative image)

Planning to buy a car or a motorcycle this festive season? Be prepared to wait for at least a couple of months to get the vehicle’s registration number. And it’s up to you how you manage to ride it with applied for (A/F) on the number plates for such a long time on the capital’s roads dotted with ‘hawk-eyed’ policemen.

Contrary to the previous practice of offering vehicles’ registration numbers at the time of their purchase, at the showrooms, the owners now have to wait for at least one or two months to get the registration number issued by the district transport office (DTO).

Sources in the DTO attributed the delay in allocation of numbers to outdated software, Vahan-2.

District transport officer, Patna, Ajay Kumar Thakur, said the delay would be done away with once the office adopted the new version of the software, Vahan-4. “If everything goes as planned, it could become a reality next year,” he said, adding that the officials at DTO were processing around 600-700 numbers per day.

“Once the new software is installed, most of the data related to vehicles have to be keyed in by dealers at the showrooms itself. The data would get uploaded in the central server and could be accessed by the DTO for quick generation of the vehicles’ registration numbers and issuance of the owner books,” said Thakur.

Officials at the DTO said the process to install new software and make it fully operational would take at least one-month’s time. “Some of the DTOs in the state have been equipped with Vahan 4 software, but they are still grappling with one technical glitch or the other. Besides the staff of DTO and executives of the authorized showrooms have to trained for operating it “, they maintained.

With the festive season already in and automobile companies doling out attractive offers, sale of vehicles has soared.. “we generated registration number of little over 8000 vehicles. We have processed registration of over 10,500 vehicles in October, even as five more days are to go this month,” said an assistant at the DTO office, adding that it might go up to more than 20000 next month.